No Name Face
by avesnovuelan
Summary: Next in CD title series...sequel to Left of the Middle and Never Enough, post season 9
1. What I know to be real

This is the next installment in my CD series that started with Never Enough. Read that and Left of the Middle before reading this.  
  
Recap: When we last saw our heroes, Mulder and Scully were on a life raft somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. Doggett and Reyes were in London and had just been visited by Mulder and Scully's old friend X.  
  
No Name Face

* * *

_"If this night won't let me rest don't let me second guess what I know to be real."_ –From Unknown by Lifehouse

* * *

Doggett and Reyes stood huddled close under one umbrella on the ragged wooden dock. A gust of wind blew the rain sideways and Reyes shrieked as the icy water sprayed her legs.  
  
Doggett pulled her a little close and laughed. "It's only water, he teased."  
  
X had driven them to the dock and left them there, giving Doggett directions to a house where they would be safe for a little while.  
  
The light from the approaching boat was becoming closer and brighter. Doggett flashed a bright flashlight at it several times in varying intervals, and the boat flashed back it's own pattern. "That's them," he said.

* * *

The boat that had plucked Mulder and Scully out of the life raft pulled along side the dock. After more than two weeks over water, the idea of dry land excited the pair. Of course 'dry' is a relative term. The rain bounced off the dock, making a thick layer of moisture hover just over the surface.  
  
Water had come to mean something to Scully. Maybe she was just getting soft and sentimental, but she had begun to think of water as more than just physically cleansing. At there home in South America, water had been a precious and valuable commodity because it had taken so much work to make it drinkable. Water was a source of new beginnings, new life, change—she thought of things like baptism, a symbolic cleansing. Scully wondered if it could ever rain enough to baptize the world and cleanse it from all the evil she had come to know.  
  
As Mulder helped her out of the boat, as she embraced Monica and John, and as the four fought their way through the rainy night towards the safe house, Scully couldn't help but feel like her sense of reality had shifted some.

* * *

AN: That was just a short intro. I have lots more written in my notebook but can't type it all at once. Please review so I know that there's still interest in this story. 


	2. Peace Again

_"You are the light that is leading me to the place where I find peace again. You are the strength that keeps me walking."_ –From 'Everything' by Lifehouse

* * *

By the time the rain stopped, every earthly possession of the four fugitives was drenched. Every fiber of Scully's being was exhausted. She still couldn't shake the sense that something was off balance. Monica felt it too. Scully hadn't yet told her about the pregnancy, but Monica knew that something was up.  
  
Reyes and Doggett walked in front, hand in hand .As the sun rose, she yawned and placed her cheek on his shoulder. Behind them, Mulder and Scully were speculating.  
  
"Look at them," she said. "There's definitely something going on there."  
  
"No way. Doggett's way too timid. Unless he's suffered a head injury recently."  
  
"I think it was Monica who made the first move. She's been ready to crack for years."  
  
"How do you know that? How long have you known her?"  
  
"She delivered my child, remember? We're close."  
  
Mulder noticed that, this time, she spoke about William without that little guilty twang in her voice. Maybe, Just maybe, she could heal.  
  
The debate ended when Mulder and Scully both caught a glimpse of Reyes's ring in the rising sunlight.

* * *

It was easily decided that walking down the road in broad daylight couldn't possibly be a good idea. They were starting to feel like they were in some junior high adventure novella, walking at night and hiding in the bushes by the side of the road during the day.  
  
Reyes and Doggett, who had both been awake for more than 24 hours, were dead on their feet. And with Scully being pregnant, Mulder was the obvious choice for the first watch. His back was against a tree, and he had a good view of the road through a gap in the bushes. Scully was sound asleep with her head in his lap. John and Monica were curled up together off to the side, also sound asleep.  
  
Mulder played with Scully's hair absentmindedly. Sitting like this gave him time to think—something he'd been trying to do as little of as possible. The train of thought started out innocently enough—something about sleeping in the woods and sleeping bags and bull-frogs (he'd been a little out of it at the time) but soon he was thinking about other things. Past cases, dangers, fears, conspiracies, pains—things he no longer knew what to do with. At least with the FBI there had been structure and order. They got a case, investigated it, solved it (okay, that part was usually debatable,) and filed it away. Simple as pie. Now there were no cases, no superiors to debate with, no manila file folders and no badges—Mulder had never dreamed that, when it was all over, those would be the things he missed. He had never been one for structure.  
  
He thought for a moment about the Lone Gunmen. He felt a twinge of emotion—after all they had been his best friends—but he somehow felt that they were the lucky ones. They weren't cold, damp and hungry sitting on the ground somewhere in England with a butt slowly going numb and a twitch in their shoulder blade.  
  
Scully shifted a little and he changed his mind about the Gunmen. Mulder was definitely the lucky one. He had gotten the girl and, in one way or another, happily ever after. And while the trio may have been his best friends, Scully was his soul. Wow she was beautiful. Stress and toil had hardened her some and turned a few stray bangs gray, but she didn't look old, just tired. And beautiful.

* * *

Scully dreamt of a house with a picket fence. .But the fence didn't protect her, and it wasn't cosmetic. In her dream the fence posts became prison bars and her beautiful house a jail cell.  
  



	3. Don't want to live like this

_"I've been trapped inside of my own mind afraid to open my eyes to what I'd find. I don't want to live like this anymore."_ –From Quasimodo by Lifehouse

* * *

"Well, here we are," Doggett announced unnecessarily.  
  
The house was overgrown with vines, and two of the three visible windows were broken.  
  
The front door creaked open, and Reyes had a strange flashback from a junior high game of Purple Hearts. The game involved mentally exploring an imagined house and trying to scare themselves for giggles. She had played the game many times and pictured many houses, but one stuck out in her mind more than any. It had looked just like this one on the outside, but on the inside it had been completely bare. Empty. Not a speck of dust or a single piece of furniture.  
  
The house they were going to stay in was completely furnished and everything was covered in dusty sheets. There was no electricity or running water, but the pantry had been stocked with non-perishable foods, and the safe room (behind a false wall in the basement) was full of emergency supplies.  
  
They worked out a schedule in which one couple would sleep for eight hours while the other kept watch, and then they'd switch. Then they'd all four be up four be up for the last eight hour shift, taking turns keeping watch.  
  
One afternoon, after they'd been there a few days and gotten the schedule down, Mulder and Scully were keeping watch while Doggett and Reyes were downstairs preparing some sort of dinner.  
  
"Rummy!" Mulder called excitedly as he picked up the card Scully had just laid down and added it to one of his piles. They were sitting in the attic of the old house, which conveniently had 360 degree-tinted windows.  
  
Doggett and Reyes came upstairs with some soup (heated on a propane burner) and crackers. They had water from an outdoor pump.  
  
They ate in silence. There were no words for what they were feeling. Okay actually there were—exhaustion, hopelessness, fear, confusion—but no one felt like talking about these things. So they focused on the basics: eating, sleeping, keeping watch, playing cards to pass the time, and waiting. Something was about to happen. They all knew it, but no one knew when or what.  
  
Monica, the most sensitive of the bunch, would've described it as a huge stack of blocks being added to regularly. They were piled just so, and one block set out of balance, one little sneeze, or one mean kid who decides to throw something at the bottom, could send the whole pile crashing. 


	4. Back into your cage

_"Catch your breath, hit the wall, scream out loud as you start to crawl back into your cage, the only place, where they will leave you alone."_ –from 'Simon' by Lifehouse

* * *

Early the next morning, right after John and Monica's shift started, the mean little kid with his kickball showed up.  
  
John was outside using the outhouse.  
  
Monica felt the van before she saw it. It turned its lights off right before leaving the highway and turning into the driveway.  
  
"Mulder, Scully, safe room!" she yelled down a pipe whose other end was inches away from Mulder's head."  
  
"I hear you!" he yelled back. He and Scully hadn't been sleeping. They had been...they hadn't been sleeping."

...

In their almost daily drills it was less than a minute before everyone was locked safely in the safe room. Anyone outside when a car approached ran into the woods to the other tunnel entrance into the safe room. John did exactly that when he heard the van pull in.

...

Mulder and Scully pushed aside the bookcase, dialed a combination on a switch hidden behind a secret panel, and pushed the secret door in, entering the safe room

...

Shit. The latch to the door that would lead Reyes out of the attic and into the service stairs that led to the basement was stuck. This had happened once in a drill, and they'd been meaning to oil it, but hadn't. Shit. If she wasn't in the safe room in less than one minute Mulder and Scully would shut and lock the door from the inside. They had all agreed on it. It was better for one person to get caught than all of them. After fifty seconds of pulling on the door vainly, she resorted to plan b: pull out her gun and pray.

...

After sixty-five seconds, Mulder heard the car pull up. He and Scully pulled the book-case back into place and pushed the door shut, barring it from the inside. A bell rang, meaning that someone was in the tunnel that led to the forest. Scully aimed her gun at the tunnel.

...

Reyes squatted in a corner with her gun pointed at the hatch. She shot the first man to come through, but the bullet only singed his ear. Three more men followed, all with guns aimed at her.  
  
Her weapon hit the floor with a defeated thud and she held her hands out just in front of her face and above her head.

...

"Where's Monica?" John hissed as he took a step out of the tunnel and into the safe room.  
  
Scully lowered her gun. "She didn't make it," she whispered.  
  
"What?! Did you wait a whole minute?"  
  
"More than," Mulder responded.  
  
"No. We can't just let them have her! Let me out there. We've got guns. Let's go!" Doggett was making for the door.  
  
Mulder stepped between him and his destination. "Doggett, be reasonable. They know we've got guns. They have more. Many more. I promise. Would she want you to get caught too? They're not going to kill her. They want us all, especially me. They'll try to use her to lure us in or lead them to us. And the odds of three of us getting one back are much better than the odds of two of us getting two back. You're not going anywhere."  
  
Doggett knew Mulder was right. But he was terrified, and he masked it with rage. "When did we all become so fucking passive? Cowering in here when we should be out there defending ourselves..."  
  
"John," Scully reached out and placed her hand on his arm, "Calm down and lower your voice. We'll get her back. I promise." With the last sentence she squeezed his upper arm a bit. 


	5. This cannot be happening

_"This cannot be happening. This is over my head but underneath my feet. Because by tomorrow morning I'll have this thing beat and everything will be back to the way that it was. I wish that it was just that easy."_ –From 'Somewhere in Between' by Lifehouse  
  
Monica's whole body hurt. She felt foggy and vaguely remembered some kind of drug. Her eyelids were heavy and refused to open, so she stretched out the rest of her senses to get her bearings. She was laying on a cold, damp, cement floor against a wall that felt about the same. Something hard and tight was enclosed around her wrist, and her clothes smelt damp and musty. Somewhere nearby water was dripping. The inside of her mouth tasted and felt like a dirty sock and her throat was tight and dry.  
  
She finally forced her eyes to open. They felt sticky and sluggish. She was alone in a dim room (lit only by a small barred window near the ceiling.) She maneuvered into a sitting position, pulled her knees to her chest and waited.

* * *

Six hours after entering the room, Doggett, Mulder, and Scully crawled out of the forest tunnel and slipped through the woods to the front of the house. The van was gone. With guns drawn, they entered the front door. The house had been turned upside down, not a single piece of furniture left standing. Monica and her captors were nowhere to be found.  
  
"Now what," Doggett asked, exasperated.  
  
They had searched the entire house, ending in the attic. They knew that she wasn't there at first glance, but after looking around anyway something caught Scully's eye.  
  
"Look!" she exclaimed. She held up a scrap of white fabric stained a rusty color red. Bile rose in her throat when she realized it was part of Monica's shirt colored with blood. Lying next to it was a note:  
  
_It's not her we want._  
  
It was written on the back of a business card, advertising a small unemployment agency called 'The London Workforce Connection: Jay Jenkins Employment Agency.'  
  



	6. I'll be Real

**A/N** Wow, the longest sabbatical in history! I'm back, though, and I promise I will finish this fic. It is possible, however, that I've lost all of my original readers. If that is the case and you are new, or even if you were reading before, it might be helpful for you to go back and review the first two fics in this series: Never Enough and Left of the Middle, in that order. Just click on my profile!

"_You could be right and I'll be real, honesty won't be a pain that you'll have to feel 'cause I don't need your approval to find my worth."_ – From "Quasimodo" by Lifehouse

"Where are your friends?" the tall man with the moustache was asking here. His flashlight shone brightly in her face.

Monica resisted the urge to pass out once again. Blood ran down her face from a gash near her temple, the reward she'd received for passing out the first time.

"I told you I don't know," she choked. She wasn't sure how long it had been since she'd been caught, but she was horribly thirsty and hungry. To add to that, she as cold, tired, and badly needed to use the bathroom. "We all split up a few days ago," she lied.

"You see, we might almost believe that, if it weren't for this, that is." Another man, this one shorter with glasses, held a chain in front of her with her wedding ring on it. She'd been wearing it when they'd taken her, but now glasses man slipped it over his neck.

"Alright, John and I were living there together. But he went to Spain a few days ago. He won't come back to the safe house; we were going to meet there."

She was sure that they didn't believe her. She internally braced herself for another blow to the head. Glasses man got very close to her face and asked, "And the other two?"

"I don't know!" she whined. "They were staying with us for a week or so, but they took off days ago. They could be anywhere by now." She was crying now, from fear and exhaustion.

"Alright," moustache man said. He reached down and unchained her wrist from the wall.

"Are you letting me go?" she asked, knowing full well that they weren't but deciding to play naïve.

In response, moustache man pulled her to her feet by her shirt collar and crushed her against the wall with his body, breathing hotly in her face.

Monica said the first thing that came to her mind. "I have to go to the bathroom."

--

"Alright. We're a three-hour walk from the dock, and the dock was about an hours drive from London," John recalled.

"So what do you suggest? Hitchhike? Walk?" Scully asked. Mulder noticed that she was resting one hand protectively over her lower abdomen.

"X said that if we ever had to leave the safe house that we should send a letter to this address and someone would help us. This house was supposed to be just temporary. Apparently plans for a permanent solution are being made."

John showed them the address written on a piece of paper that he'd never taken from his pocket.

"First things first, we can't stay here anymore. Let's pack up everything, get a letter in the mail, and leave," Mulder said, deciding that he needed to take charge. Scully was pregnant and Dogget had just lost his wife. Obviously Mulder was the only one capable of thinking logically. For once.

**A/N** Okay. So I have more in my notebook. If I get a few reviews I will post it. Is it worth it?


	7. Keep Spinning Around

**A/N**: Well…as sad as I am to only have one reviewer (much love, GothicSpook), I feel like this fic needs closure. So I'm finishing it anyway, mostly for myself and for the characters, who definitely deserve it.

Chapter 7:

_When will this end? It goes on and on, over and over and over again. Keep spinning around I know that it won't stop 'till I step down from this for good."_ – From "Sick Cycle Carousel" by Lifehouse

The first night after dropping the letter in a mailbox belonging to a large farmhouse, they slept in the woods about twenty minutes off the road. They decided that if they took off on their own help would never find them, so they had written that they would "wait for your call," the signal that they were still nearby. They had enough supplies for five days.

The address was somewhere in London, so they assumed that would be enough. They had also included an encoded message about Monica, hoping that X and Skinner would get to her before the kidnappers ran out of patience. This had always been the emergency back-up plan, but John was not satisfied.

"How long do you think they're going to wait before they kill her?" John paced back and forth in front of the small campfire. "She doesn't know where we are. How long before they figure that out and decide she's not worth keeping alive?"

"Monica's a smart girl, John. You of all people should know that," Scully reasoned from her seat on the ground. She held a half-eaten sandwich in one hand and was picking at it and consuming it slowly with the other hand. Mulder had finished his and was picking crumbs off his shirt; Doggett's sat untouched on a stump next to the fire.

The sun was going down, which meant that they had to put the fire out to avoid being seen. Doggett took the first watch; too restless to sleep, while Mulder and Scully rested uncomfortably in their sleeping bags.

--

Monica was alone again, this time locked in a bathroom adjacent to the room she'd been in before. It contained only a rarely-used toilet and sink—no paper, soap, or towel—but it suited her needs. She did her best to rinse the dirt out of her wounds and dry them with a clean corner of her shirt. The men seemed to have forgotten about her for the time being, which was just about the best-case-scenario. She weighted her options carefully. Her body was gearing up for fight or flight—heart racing, palms sweating, the whole bit. But her mind wasn't sure that fighting was the best option. The truth was that she could never take out four armed men with nothing but her bare hands. What she had told the men was true—she really had no idewa where the other three were. They would've waited a while in the safe room and then left, sending a letter to X. Her attackers had left a calling card, and soon someone would come for her. Until then, she just needed to buy herself some time…


End file.
